FP Passport has the quote from Senator Biden’s talk at the Brookings Institution today:
I’m not really sure what that means. I understand what Carter meant when he used the word in relation to Israel, not that it was an appropriate comparison, but saying it in this context would imply exactly what? That U.S. troops are protecting the privileges of an elite from an oppressed majority? That is exactly what U.S. troops put an end to when they eliminated the Baath party–the tool by which a small band of Sunnis from Tikrit were able to keep Iraq’s Shiia as second-class citizens. Iraq was an apartheid state, and Saddam’s Republican Guard was its “apartheid police.” All U.S. troops are doing is trying to keep alive as many Iraqis as possible–Shiia and Sunni alike.
